Blog Post Archive

Philip Dawkins’ unorthodox play Failure: A Love Story isn’t the first to counsel music, love and laughter as an antidote to death, but it may be unique in heralding that milestone in a blithe and gleeful way. The chirpy songs and capricious plot turns in this whimsical piece are an...

On this week's Voice Film Club podcast: The Vacation reboot disappoints, as does Adam Sandler's Pixels (but it can't be near as bad as critics are describing, says the Village Voice's Alan Scherstuhl). Meanwhile, the '40s noir melodrama Phoenix might be one of the year's best, says Voice film critic...

Next Fest isn’t like most other film festivals, so much so that calling it one almost feels misleading. This is a good thing. The Sundance-hosted festivities are an increasingly multimedia affair in which moving images are only part of the draw — a model for like-minded entities to follow. (It's...

In an exciting new collaboration, Film Independent at LACMA and the Toronto International Film Festival have selected three films representing the best in Canadian cinema. All of these events are free, and the first is tonight: Albert Shin's filial drama In Her Place. Shin, a Canadian of Korean extraction, returned...

It started with a math problem. “There were between 8,000 to 10,000 arrests, more than 2,000 people were injured, but only 60 dead?” San Pedro author Ryan Gattis says a bit incredulously one morning over a bean and cheese taco at Guisados’ Boyle Heights location. “That struck me as creative...

fri 7/31 Spamalot, the musical adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, premiered to Broadway in 2005 and ran for more than 1,500 performances, winning the Best Musical Tony Award along the way. Now a production of the show — written by Python co-founder Eric Idle and John Du...

“We haven’t been treated fairly, and everybody knows it, says actress Maria Gobetti. She's objecting to the union's elimination of L.A.'s 99-Seat Theater Plan, which, for the uninitiated, was in effect for a quarter century and permitted union actors to work in theaters of up to 99-seats in L.A. County...

In 2013, creators Ron House and Alan Sherman revived an abbreviated version of their 1973 Mexican cabaret parody El Grande de Coca Cola at Santa Monica's Ruskin Group Theatre. The show poked loony fun at a hopelessly inept, south-of-the-border Vaudeville troupe using a brash and borderline-transgressive mix of politically incorrect...

It's midday and your eyes are glazed over from the project that you just can't finish. You hop online, thinking that some social media time might clear your head. This only makes things worse. Instead of cute animal photos, you stumble upon arguments about vaccines or guns or both. You...

This week, a 73-year-old artist sings her life story and a Mid-City garage becomes a bar with ashtrays made of PBR cans. Out of line Artist Henry Taylor often is quoted as saying that painting is like "having a carton of milk in the fridge. It's just going to happen."...

It’s difficult and rare to come across stories that can illuminate the Holocaust in unfamiliar ways. Bent is such a play, and at the Mark Taper Forum it's getting its first major revival since its 1979 Broadway debut. Though decades have passed since both the play's premiere and the history...

Most millennials might be more familiar with MacGruber, the Saturday Night Live skit turned 2010 movie with Will Forte and Kristen Wiig, than MacGyver, the 1985-92 ABC series that spawned the parody. The titular character was a mulleted, secret agent hottie who went from Russia to the Amazon getting rid...

Ever since beloved sitcom star and fatherly figure Bill Cosby openly admitted to giving Quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with — accusations of which had been floating around for years — his image has been shattered. In its wake, activists are demanding that he be stripped of...

Have a favorite comedian that everyone should know about? An art gallery that deserves more foot traffic? An Instagrammer whose photos blow your mind every time? Usually we tell you the L.A. experiences we recommend — now it's time for you to tell us yours. Through Aug. 9, we're asking for...

This weekend, an estimated 3,000 people will gather in East L.A. to pay tribute to the greatest lowrider car of all time. Individual lowriders typically resist "best of"–type generalizations (it's about the culture more than the individual cars), but when it comes to the Gypsy Rose, the distinction of All-Time...

Security is tight at Riot Games’ slick West L.A. complex, where the company whiskey bar looks like a pirate ship and staffers refer to themselves as “rioters.” They all work on League of Legends, Riot’s online war game, which draws 30 million players daily. Tight security caused some hiccups on...

Bart Simpson — once an underachiever and proud of it — is about to be the subject of gallery-worthy art. French magazine Be Street’s founder Benjamin Benichou has a deep interest in off-brand cultural detritus, and this weekend he's bringing early Simpsons folk art, aka “Bootleg Bart,” to L.A. The form...

fri 7/24 Aside from maybe winning the lottery, there's nothing better in this world than a midsummer concert under the stars and moonlight at the one-and-only Hollywood Bowl. This weekend's Tchaikovsky Spectacular features the L.A. Philharmonic and artistic director Gustavo Dudamel performing a selection of the composer's greatest hits, including...